“All right.” He shrugged. “Go ahead. Go on. Say whatever you want. Let it all out. Might help with the nerves.”
“My nerves are fine,” she mumbled, just wishing for Asa’s warm, protective arms to be wrapped around her right now.
“Sure they are,” Hunter muttered under his breath, but Carmen heard it anyway.
“Really, Hunter.” She pressed her lips together, squinting at him and trying to decipher his thought process. “Why are you here?”
A part of her—a tiny, tiny part—felt the beginning seeds of hope plant themselves right in the middle of her chest. Maybe she wasn’t dead to Hunter after all.
He didn’t respond to her question, and instead just sighed and attempted to fix his hair. “Come on, we can’t stand out here forever.”
He began climbing the steps, but Carmen remained rooted to the spot.
Hunter must have noticed the lack of a presence behind him, because he then looked over his shoulder and upon finding her still standing there, stopped in his tracks.
“You’re going to just freeze to death,” he deadpanned.
“Would be doing you a favour, right?” she asked quietly, swallowing past the lump in her throat. God, she hated being vulnerable in front of him.
With Asa, it was different. Carmen could wear her heart on her sleeve and cut open her chest for him to take a peek at her soul. But opening up with Hunter, letting her emotions show around him, made her feel weak. Pathetic even. Like she needed to be tougher in his eyes. As if her bones needed to turn to concrete and her tongue to steel.
Hunter visibly flinched at her words, but the momentary display of emotion was gone as soon as it had come.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he muttered, averting his gaze. “Just come in.”
“No.”
Hunter’s eyes snapped back to hers, incredulity written all over his face. “What do you mean no?”
“I mean no,” Carmen bit out, feeling that same old bitter feeling run through her veins as she struggled to keep her normally calm composure.
Hunter swore under his breath and looked away, jaw clenching angrily. “You’re never this difficult,” he snapped. “With anyone. Ever. Why do you have to act this way now?”
“And how exactly would you know that, Hunter?” Carmen laughed darkly. “How would you know whether I get difficult from time to time or not? Because you’ve been there by my side all these years? Because you’ve stood by me? Because you’ve been my brother?”
Carmen’s eyes stung, and she could feel the prickling sensation behind them—tiny little needles jabbing at her tear ducts endlessly while she struggled to get a grip on her emotions.
The frigid facade that Hunter seemed to always be wearing crumpled at her words, turning to ashes and dust then getting carried away with the wind.
But that vulnerable moment of his lasted for a fleeting moment, gone within a blink of Carmen’s eyes. She watched as Hunter’s expression just hardened, turning to stone before he turned back around and stormed towards the doors, leaving Carmen standing alone in the dark.
Why did it hurt even twelve years later? Hunter had abandoned her a lifetime ago, left her alone in the dark when she’d needed him the most, so how come watching him walk away hurt her just as much as it did the first time?
She watched him raise a fist to knock on the door, his clenched fist hanging in mid-air. She watched him bend his head and tilt it to the side as if he was having a debate with himself in his head, watched him kick the wall next to the door in frustration.
And then she watched him actually turn back around with a conflicted expression on his face.
After few more beats of hesitation, Hunter sighed and slowly walked back down the steps, coming to a stop directly in front of her. “What do you want from me, Carmen?” he asked quietly.
Her throat seemed to tighten at the same time the lump lodged there grew even larger, making it indefinitely harder for her to get the words out.
“I want you to tell me why you’re here,” she told him in a small voice, feeling like the five-year-old kid who had to go and confess that she’d broken one of his Marvel action figures when she’d tripped down the stairs with it. She’d expected him to be angry, then, to throw a tantrum and forbid her from touching any of his belongings ever again.
He hadn’t, though. He’d been too worried about whether she’d hurt herself from the fall. Then he stole some candy from the hidden stash before sneaking in to her room in the middle of the night to cheer her up.
It was how she felt again right now, standing in front of him, wondering if he was going to lash out and tell her to leave him alone.
Instead, his shoulders slumped forward slightly and he ran a hand down his exhausted face. “You know why I’m here,” he finally said, looking at her for the first time without any coldness to his demeanour.
Carmen shook her head. “I need you to say it.”
Annoyance flickered across his face for a brief moment, and he looked away, swore under his breath, and then looked back down at her again.
“I didn’t.” He stopped himself, seeming to struggle with something that Carmen couldn’t exactly see. Hunter closed his eyes, breathed in deeply until he finally exhaled in a calm, steady manner.
When he opened his eyes, Carmen knew it was no longer a trick of the lighting; there was an almost tangible softness in his eyes. The normally cold blue irises of his looked like they actually held a certain kind of warmth in them now.
“I didn’t want you to be alone,” he eventually said, his voice barely above a whisper as
